15. Interested in the technical difficulties. Enlightened me on this...

20. I'll find you a couple good links in the morning.

Right now I'm kinda busy. We just had a tornado touch down about a mile from my house and I have to go help some friends with emergency work on their houses,

But just real quick, here's a quickie from Wiki:

"Underground lines are strictly limited by their thermal capacity, which permits less overload or re-rating than overhead lines. Long underground AC cables have significant capacitance, which may reduce their ability to provide useful power to loads beyond 50 miles (80 kilometres). DC cables are not limited in length by their capacitance, however, they do require HVDC converter stations at both ends of the line to convert from DC to AC before being interconnected with the transmission network."

There are lots more. And these articles deal with "normal" high voltage transmission lines. The new lines being constructed are larger, Very High Voltage transmission lines, and have even more problems with corona effects, inductance and capacitance of nearby soils, insulation, heat dissipation and other electromagnetic field issues. It's just not practical to bury them for any distance. And ratepayers are not willing to pay for it, including municipal power company customers.

Our local press is now calling yesterday's weather event a "suspected tornado". I'm not sure of the distinction to the 73 homeowners whose roofs are completely gone, big trees through their houses, motorhomes overturned and homes collapsed. Amazingly, as of midnight last night, there were no reported injuries. We don't usually have tornadoes in our little section of the Texas Hill Country. I've been here 22 years and this was by far the worst I've seen. The local big box building supply store (kinda like a Home Depot, but local) opened last night to provide plywood, tarps and other materials to folks trying to patch up their homes to protect interiors. That's what I love about my small little town. Everyone was out helping way past midnight.